"Yes, I know. Go on."

"Well, the thing ended in the blighter hauling him out from under the
chair and getting more and more shirty, until finally he laid into him
with a stick. That is to say," said Ginger, coldly accurate, "he started
laying into him with a stick." He brooded for a moment with knit brows.
"A spaniel, mind you! Can you imagine anyone beating a spaniel? It's
like hitting a little girl. Well, he's a fairly oldish man, you know,
and that hampered me a bit: but I got hold of the stick and broke it
into about eleven pieces, and by great good luck it was a stick he
happened to value rather highly. It had a gold knob and had been
presented to him by his constituents or something. I minced it up a
goodish bit, and then I told him a fair amount about himself. And then--
well, after that he shot me out, and I came here."

Sally did not speak for a moment.

"You were quite right," she said at last, in a sober voice that had
nothing in it of her customary flippancy. She paused again. "And what
are you going to do now?" she said.

"I don't know."

"You'll get something?"

"Oh, yes, I shall get something, I suppose. The family will be pretty
sick, of course."

"For goodness' sake! Why do you bother about the family?" Sally burst
out. She could not reconcile this young man's flabby dependence on his